Strung out bees

I'm not entirely sure what to think about this, or what prompted the scientists to try it, but it's interesting: Honeybees Get High on Cocaine and Dance, Dance, Dance
I hope you're all having fun breaks!

Are you stressed?

I have a solution. Look at this blog http://www.bugunderglass.com/gallery/insect_art.html And be happy (do I get a bug now? lololol jk)

Black and White

I was trying to think of some brilliant thing to blog about, and for some reason I remembered this article in National Geographic I read a couple years back about the "blackest black" and "whitest white" found in nature. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the article, but I was able to find some other information.

The blackest black is in a swallowtail butterfly, Papilio ulysses. This butterfly is endemic to Australasia, which I just learned is the region including Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, and some other random islands. The structure of their scales sort of traps light, so that more of it is absorbed. The butterflies developed this super-black due to sexual selection, because the darker pigment makes the blue more striking, which attracts more females. Chemical engineers are trying to mimic the structure by using nickel-phosphorus alloys, which they could use in optical instruments. Or for really dark paint. (Yeonwoo you could use that!)

Papilio ulysses

The underside of Papilio ulysses is a lot different.

I hear these look great with caddisfly cases.

Tacky?

The whitest white in nature is found on another insect, the Cyphochilus beetle. The beetle is also covered in scales, which are made up of randomly oriented filaments that scatter light everywhere. The scales are super thin (about half the thickness of a red blood cell). This super-white could have evolved so that the beetles could blend into white fungi. That doesn't really make sense to me, though because then the beetles are more extremely white than the fungi...

The Cyphochilus beetle.

Well that was cool. I'm mad I couldn't find the National Geographic article, because it had some really cool pictures. Instead, here is a link to some really awesome pictures of nudibranchs. I know they aren't arthropods, but they're still pretty damn cool. See y'all in lab!

My weakest blog post is now

But since it's a participation reward I guess that's ok Lookie here! http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/347/20121203/flowers-weaver-ants-poor-pollinators.htm We talked about it in lecture last week! Or maybe today! Woooweee lookie here, I can't remember the days. I guess it's time to stop eating all the food in my room to procrastinate studying for tomorrow's quiz and writing that paper... yep.

Fungal Parasites and Zombie Ants

Val shared this video in her E&EB 122 section last year.  It shows a fungus, specifically a Cordycep, that infects ants ant come into contact with it.  Once it infects an ant, it will begin to grow, and kill its host in a few days (Hughes et al 2011).  Then, a stalk will emerge from the ant's head and release new spores (as seen in the video, and also this picture).

(National Geographic)

One of the more remarkable things about fungus (or rather, these funguses, since what was thought to be one species turns out to be at least four) is that it first causes the ants to find a way to a place that is well suited for releasing the spores, such as a certain height in the rainforest canopy.  The ant then latches on to the leave, anchoring itself with a "death grip" so that it stays fixed.

This isn't rare parasite behavior.  This kind host manipulation is found in may species, including insects,  mice, snails, and many others.  It can even affect humans (serious links one and two; silly link).  What's amazing is how long this particular fungus seems to have been around: 48 million years.  It's also pretty neat how they discovered this.  Obviously, behavior can be very difficult to study from the fossil record, and fungi don't lend to good fossils either.  But the ant's death grip actually leaves a very distinctive mark on leaves, which are often preserved well.  The researchers looked at leaf fossils, and found evidence of this behavior 48 mya, making it the first known example of host behavioral manipulation...as well as something that looks like it's straight out of a science fiction movie.

Grasshoppers Change Courtship Tunes to Cope with Urban Noises

Hiiiii!

I bet you thought I would not blog this week. BUT HERE I AM!

Here's a cool article my friend found for me: "Grasshoppers Change Courtship Tunes to Cope with Urban Noises."

And here's the tl;dr (too long; didn't read) version:

Grasshoppers, like many insects, communicate with each other with sounds that they produce. But in urban environments, where the sounds of large industrial vehicles and people and all other man-made things are very loud, grasshoppers have adapted to adjust to these barriers to their effective communication. A team of researchers from the University of Bielefeld in Germany observed the bow-winged grasshoppers from roadsides as well as quieter places. The scientists analyzed more than 1,000 courtship songs that these grasshoppers produced. In a statement, the P.I. Ulrike Lampe described the results: "Bow-winged grasshoppers produce songs that include low and high frequency components. We found that grasshoppers from noisy habitats boost the volume of the lower-frequency part of their song, which makes sense since road noise can mask signals in this part of the frequency spectrum." The researchers believe this is not a "spontaneous behavioral adaptation to noise," but, rather an effect of long-term adaptation to these environmental changes. 

Really cool. I'm interested in knowing if females who are adapted to receive the mating calls can recognize grasshoppers from both noisy and quiet areas as members of the same species to reproduce with. 

If you want more reading, the article was published in Functional Ecology. Clickie here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.12000/full.

Hidden Treasures of Branford Library

So I was working in the library and got distracted by looking at the books on the wall and saw this beauty:

So of course I had to procrastinate and look through it. There were some great pictures so I took pictures of the pictures to show you guys.  I found my new favorite butterfly:

(The one on the top right)

I think I'm going to have to search for that one until I find it for my collection. It's called Panacea Prola.

I took some other pictures of pretty butterflies too:

After finding this book I decided to look to see if there were any other books on insects to help me procrastinate some more. I didn't find much, but I did find a book that was about a boat named after an insect, so I took a picture of that:

I realize that that is backwards, so just to clarify, the book is about a boat named Gipsy Moth. I also found The Origin of Species, which is E&EB related so I took a picture of that for you guys too.

And that concludes the list of insect-related books found in one of the rooms in the Branford library.